Unbelievably, there was a time when the Toronto Star thought Ernest Hemingway “too big for his britches.”

Hemingway had arrived at the paper to freelance at age 20, became its European correspondent at 22 and returned to local staff at 24.

He'd already travelled the world. Seen a thing or two.

Editors back then were gruff ‘n’ tough and thought cocky reporters like Hemingway should be brought down a peg or two in the newsroom by being “harnessed to the plough of routine chores.”

So, in September 1923 Hemingway was sent out in the middle of the night to report on a jailbreak from Kingston Penitentiary by five inmates. Tough guys.

One of them was Norman “Red” Ryan, sentenced to 25 years and 30 lashes “before his breakfast” for robbing a bank. After the breakout, Ryan was cornered in a barn. He attacked the guard with a pitchfork and escaped again. Hemingway reported.

So much for a “routine chore.”

Hemingway's gripping front-page account of the manhunt, complete with blood and bloodhounds, is included in this compelling collection of journalism Hemingway wrote for the Star from 1920 to 1924. The writing is reproduced as it was published at the time.

Hemingway wrote many articles about fishing, bullfighting and boozing – at home and abroad. In 1920 he even took on Toronto’s mayor, Tommy Church.

He was also an early pioneer of news-you-can-use.

Here are two paragraphs responding to “a lady” who asked the paper how to prepare for an Algonquin Park canoe trip:

“ ... cut cut cut. Weed out something from your kit every time you look at it in preparation. Go easy on the clothes. You will sleep in them anyway, most likely, and you must wash them as you go: Wash at night and dry by the camp fire.

“A warning about canoes: A lot of dish-shaped pleasure canoes are being made nowadays which are murder on a canoe trip. Be sure to rent a good, wide-bellied canoe that will carry a load in wind and wave. Rented canoes are often old fellows that have been painted so often they have about 50 lbs of white lead on them. Pick the lightest and roomiest 15- or 16-foot canoe available.”

This month is an exciting time for Hemingway fans. Star reporter Bill Schiller has reviewed new materials that have become available in recent years that shed more light on Hemingway’s time in Toronto and his relationship with the Star.

“What becomes clear is the pivotal role the Star played in his development as a writer,” says Schiller. “He arrived from Chicago as a frustrated 20-year-old unknown. He had toiled seven months at the Kansas City Star and had never earned a byline.

“The Star gave him that and more, not only a platform with the freewheeling Star Weekly the paper’s premier publication – but later the keys to the world by making him the Star’s correspondent in Europe.”

Scott Donaldson, one of America’s leading literary biographers told Schiller: “Just think of how young he was at that time, only 22, and they sent him off to cover Europe. It was an incredible opportunity. What a deal.”

Hemingway seized it and wrote his way into history, gathering materials for his literary works.

This collection has much of Hemingway's bylined writing as well as the article on Norman “Red” Ryan that was part of the “missing” Star Hemingway work.

Still missing is what was possibly the last thing he wrote at the Star when, according to editor William McGeary, Hemingway “sat down at an office typewriter and marshalled his grievances and denunciations.”

As McGeary wrote:

“Page after page he hammered out on the old mill. Finally, he took the sheets of copy paper and pasted them together in a scroll so long that, when he pinned it to the office bulletin board, it trailed almost to the floor.

“So disappeared the screed which, if still extant, would be one of the liveliest and fieriest entries in any library of Hemingwaynia.”

The master, as we know, went on to conquer the literary world. Did his experience at the Star really matter?

Hemingway kept his Star clippings all of his life.

Enjoy.

The Hemingway Papers is an exclusive commemorative edition of more than 70 of the articles Hemingway wrote for the Toronto Star in the 1920s. The 80-page newsprint collection is now available at StarStore.ca.